Tag: Animation

The Fake (UK Anime Network Review)

Posted on by 2 Comments

2013 - The Fake (still 7

Another Korean Film Festival review just gone live on UK Anime Network, this time a new animated effort from the director of King of Pigs – The Fake.

 

Yeon Sang-ho’s previous film, The King of Pigs, was the first Korean animation to be screened at Cannes and was nothing if not a bleak look at the prevalence and long term effects of bullying in the Korean high school system. His next film, The Fake, is another dark exposé but this time of another great pillar of Korean society – evangelical religion. False prophets abound as Yeon takes us on a difficult journey through the nature of faith, desperation and the exploitation of human weakness.

A small Korean town is slowly being dismantled before being sacrificed for new damming project. The people of the town are being appropriately compensated by the government, but still they’ll have to pick up and start again somewhere else even though many of them are already past retirement age. Two new forces are descending on this once ordinary town – one offers hope in the form of an evangelical preacher who claims to cure the sick and offers a place in a new paradise (to those with the money to buy a ticket – places strictly limited, terms and conditions may apply) and the other a violent drunkard, Min-chul, who wastes no time in wreaking havoc on the lives of his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, Min-chul picks a fight with the wrong person and is the only one to realise that the preacher’s “backer” is notorious fraudster currently wanted by police for a string of similar crimes. Sometimes the truth comes in unpleasant packages, and being the sort man he is, who would believe Min-chul when he’s the only one who’s seen through this “fake” miracle?

It goes without saying that like The King of Pigs, the world depicted in the The Fake is utterly bleak and without even the faintest glimmerings of hope. Every character is flawed, very few have any redeeming features at all and almost nothing good happens in the entire course of film. However, it is marginally more subtle than King of Pigs which is a much welcome upgrade over the previous film’s excesses. Faced with such a bleak situation, it isn’t surprising that the entire town has fallen hook, line and sinker for the false hope offered by the eerily cult-like preacher and his camp of evangelicals. The preacher himself may once have been a genuine man of god, but his business minded backer acts totally without compunction and is only interested in cold, hard cash. Peddling “holy water” as a supposed curative, neither the preacher nor the business man seem to care that one of their biggest supporters is currently suffering from tuberculosis and foregoing modern medicine in favour of this spiritual treatment – after all, the con is nearly played out and they’ll be on their way before their spurious claims are exposed.

Their only adversary is Min-chul, a man so rude and violent that people stopped paying attention to him years ago. It doesn’t help that Min-chul is much less interested in the injustice of the fraudulent operation than he is in taking personal revenge against the group, firstly because of what happened the first time he met the businessman and secondly because they threaten to take away his wife and daughter which seems to be the thing that most frightens him. Nevertheless, he is a dogged pursuer and his constant attention is enough to put the fraudsters on edge. The real horrifying truth is that some of these people half know the reality already, they just don’t want to hear it. It’s much easier to just believe in the false hope offered to you than to face a hopeless reality in which you have no control and no possibilities. If someone tells you they can carry your burdens for you and make it all OK, you likely won’t want to listen to someone who says differently and the fact of the matter is you’re very unlikely to trust someone you didn’t like very much in the first place no matter how sensible their arguments maybe.

In terms of animation style, The Fake offers a slight upgrade over The King of Pigs whilst retaining a similar aesthetic. Yeo overuses the shaky-cam effects which have an oddly rhythmical, computerised feeling which becomes distracting and works against their intended purpose but overall the The Fake feels much more accomplished in terms of production values. It’s a cynical message and hardly an original one, but The Fake offers its own take on the nature of faith and organised religion and bar a few missteps does so with a much more nuanced eye than The King of Pigs. Intensely bleak, violent and unremitting, The Fake is definitely not for the faint of heart but is a definite step up from The King of Pigs and ironically offers a ray of hope for serious animation in Korea.

 

009 Re:Cyborg

Posted on by Leave a comment

branding

Cyborg 009 by Shotaro Ishinomori is one of the most widely read and well regarded manga series in Japan. It has been adapted as an anime movie and TV series several times, most recently in 2001 where it ran for fifty-one episodes. Although the manga dealt with some complex themes, most of these adaptations had leant decidedly to the family friendly with the team of nine cyborgs squaring off against various deadly enemies and saving the world week after week. For this new adaptation, however, director Kenji Kamiyama – the creator of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Eden of the East and Moribito, famed for his willingness to engage mature, topical subject matter has decided to take the film back to the manga’s darker heart.

This is a world of mass destruction, sky scrapers fall, buildings explode, people run and scream yet it is normalised – this is the way of the world. Joe Shimamura is a bored high school student who feels as if he’s living his life in repetition. Recently he’s begun to hear a voice – His Voice that’s offering him a new purpose and a new path if he will only follow it. Follow it he must though what His Voice is asking him to do is something truly abhorrent. Thankfully, before he can accomplish the task he’s been charged with, a large Native American turns up and begins to beat the stuffing out of him seemingly with the guidance of a French woman giving instructions from an aircraft hovering above. Luckily for all concerned, Shimamura’s survival instincts kick back in and he remembers his true identity just in time to catch said French woman after she’s rather riskily jumped out of her plane. Shimamura isn’t a high school student at all, he’s the head of a nine cyborg crime fighting team and there’s something very wrong in the world. His Voice is reaching more and more people and convincing them to do awful things in His name – who is He, what does He want and how are they going to stop him?

It’s a truly international cast with each of the cyborgs representing a different nation – 001 Ivan (Russia), 002 Jet (America), 003 François (France), 004  Heinrich (Germany), 005 Geronimo (Native American), 006 Changku (China) 007 Great Britain (British), 008 Pyunma (Africa), 009 Joe Shimamura (Japan). Tellingly, Jet and Shimamura have had some kind of bust up prior to the action of the film and tension still lingers – is America behind these attacks? Why are the NSA so suspiciously present and why does it seem they’re so keen to scapegoat the cyborgs as a terrorist group? Can Jet still be trusted or has he become involved with this dark plot? If the team are going to succeed in figuring out just what is going on its going to need an awful lot of international cooperation.

A familiarity with the source material doesn’t feel a necessity whilst watching the film, however though those cognisant of Kamiyama’s typically complex themes may feel a lack of depth in some of the imagery used. Christian religious allusions abound with fossilised angels and biblical sounding pronouncements from our unknown assailant but the overarching mythology is never really addressed or explained in any significantly explicit manner. Despite this the dialogue sometimes leans towards clunkyness overloaded with the weight of complicated exposition. The lack of clarity in the cosmology at play may leave some scratching their heads as the film ends in its rather ambiguous fashion, few would deny though that it’s been fun getting there.

Alongside its cerebral offerings 009 Re: Cyborg also serves up its fair share of pedal to the floor action sequences. Making the most of its 3D production and accompanied by Kenji Kawai’s energetic score the film succeeds in providing some genuinely thrilling set pieces. The use of 3D here is truly inspired and provides a welcome level of depth and inclusivity which showcases the best use of the medium. Though it wears its 3D badge proudly, the animation has been rendered with a 2D, cel shaded look much favoured by Production I.G. in the past.  It may look hand drawn but it has of course been created with computer technology – this has its benefits but more than a few costs. Though the look of the piece is striking, the computerisation is at times overly obvious and detracts from the otherwise traditional aesthetic. Characters sometimes move oddly or lack expression – which might be accounted for when concerning the cyborgs themselves but is less easy to explain away when it occurs with characters intended to appear 100% human. Still, these are minor problems and if one is able to adjust to the stylisation of the film they shouldn’t overly effect the enjoyment of it.

009 Re: Cyborg is not without its faults but it is still a very enjoyable experience. Its use of 3D, unusual visual style and innovative technology mark it out as essential viewing for anyone interested in the future of anime film making. Fans of Kamiyama’s previous work may feel short changed that the confined format of a feature film hasn’t allowed him free reign to fully explore his complex ideas yet what 009 has provided is the opportunity to showcase his talents as a director whilst crafting an entertaining and intelligent action extravaganza.

A Liar’s Autobiography – LFF 2012

Posted on by Leave a comment

 

A few years before he died, Graham Chapman recorded a a kind of audiobook detailing some of his experiences embellished with flights of pure whimsy. Now, in 2012, these recordings have enabled Chapman to become the star of a new animated feature attempting to bring some of his story to the big screen. Starting with an audio clip of Chapman asking for his thirty seconds of abuse, it then moves to a sort of framing device in which he forgets his lines on broadway, promptly collapses and hits his head provoking a surreal odyssey through his life so far. Boasting three director credits (one of whom being Bill Jones – son of Terry) and the work of fourteen different animation studios the film uses many different animation styles and techniques.

It is perhaps a matter of aesthetic taste but some of the animation styles serve their subject matter better than others. The seeming lack of motivation for the switching between styles lends the film an episodic felling which prevents it gaining any real traction and is often more of a distraction than something that brings any kind of artistic contribution. Undoubtedly, much of the animation is good, solid work but taken as a whole it fails to come together in any meaningful way.

It also doesn’t really help that it ends up being fairly light on the autobiographical detail so that anyone with even a cursory interest in all things Python or even just having been raised in the UK over the past thirty years isn’t going to hear anything they didn’t know already. Even the darker elements of Chapman’s life are glossed over in an ‘all jolly good fun, ho ho ho’ sort of way rather than engaged with any kind of insight.

Thirdly, it really just feels as if it’s trying way too hard. Unfortunately it misses the effortless silliness of Monty Python that’s the best example of English whimsy and winds up feeling by turns juvenile and laboured. Crushingly, it’s sometimes as if the animation seems superfluous where Chapman’s voice alone might have done the job better as the animation just isn’t really adding anything into the mix. Slightly gimmicky things like casting Cameron Diaz as the voice of Sigmund Freud initially scream ‘genius!’ but prove too on the nose and collapse under the weight of their own absurdity.

That’s not to say it’s a total disaster – it is moderately enjoyable and at times quite funny, just not quite as much as it seems to think it is. It felt very much like the sort of of British grown up animation that was commoner in the ’90s but forced into the biopics mode that’s really popular with BBC4. Possibly, it may have worked better on the small screen in one of the lighter documentary spots but as a big screen experience it fails as either a documentary or an entertainment film. Diverting rather than a must see.

At the European gala screening we were treated to a few actors playing various Graham Chapman roles such as King Arthur/Brian beforehand and a pop up (literarily) performance from the London Gay Men’s choir during the film’s musical interlude. Something of a curate’s egg but worth seeing.